After furore, Govt exempts WhatsApp, social media messages from purview

NEW DELHI: Hours after proposing a draft National Encryption Policy that makes deleting of WhatsApp messages illegal in the country, the Government seems to have realized its mistake, and has quickly reacted to add a clarification that the proposed encryption policy will not apply to social media.

The clarification came soon after Twitteratis reacted in anger to the proposed policy, which mandated that users will have to store their WhatsApp messages for a period of 90 days, and present it to the law enforcement agencies when asked to.

The Government has clarified that mass use encryption products, which are currently being used in web applications, social media sites, and social media applications such as Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter etc, will be exempt from the purview of the national encryption policy. In addition, SSL/TLS encryption products being used in Internet-banking and payment gateways as directed by the Reserve Bank of India, and SSL/TLS encryption products being used for e-commerce and password based transactions, will also be exempt.

The Draft National Encryption Policy which was published by the government can be accessed here